Electro-adhesive gripper component selection for pick and place of commonly used materials

Automation of handling commonly used materials such as Nitrile gloves, Polypropylene sheet, Polycarbonate sheet, HDPE and Glass poses certain key challenges such as uniform grip of the material, ply separation, smooth operation with no contamination of material, release in correct orientation, tuneable to various loads, efficient speed and accuracy and attaining repeatable and reliable results. This research focuses on electro-adhesive gripping technology as a solution for material handling in an industrial automation setup. Since electroadhesion is a micro level phenomenon that works on the principles of a parallel plate capacitor, the key components that influence the performance of this gripper are the Electrode structure, Dielectric material, Base material and Power supply. Through literature review, substantiated by experimentation of various configurations/materials that make up individual components of the gripper, following solution was identified to provide repeatable and reliable results with 68.75% efficiency: (a) Interdigitated Electrodes, (b) Liquid dielectrics: Barium titanate mixture (ratio 2:1) deposited evenly on the electrodes, (c) Nylon used as base material, (d) DC power supply for the pick-up cycle, (e) Switch-off of the power supply in release cycle. For efficiency calculation, an equation was derived where efficiency of achieving repeatable and reliable results is expressed as a percentage of number of experiments with desired outcome vs the total number of experiments conducted. Here desired outcome is further defined as directly proportional to the successful pick up and release of object and inversely proportional to the time taken in each case. Such a universal equation can be used for analysis of experiments on any similar application of automated handling of objects.